i guess i am a reader, after all

At least if this quiz is any indicator (hat tip to sprite for this online quiz):

Thing is, I’m not really a person who gets lost in a book. I can’t exactly say why, because I was a voracious reader in my youth: I read tons of books in elementary and junior high school.

But high school and college had an adverse effect on my reading habits – as did the internet. In high school and college, I ran into a string of English teachers and professors (not all of them, mind you, just a select few) who made reading a pain. The worst was when they took tomes that were part of my favorite books collection and told me that I was not understanding them, or misinterpreting them, or didn’t have the “proper critical acumen to comprehend the stories” in front of me (that last one is a verbatim quote from a most-despised professor from college, said to me in a one-on-one meeting – asshat).

That, combined with the rigorous academic load I carried during my last year of undergraduate work, turned me off of books as a recreational endeavor. I’ve since only occasionally taken a plunge into a book for non-academic reasons, which is a shame, as I have a great number of books that I own and have every intent of reading.

But then there’s the internet and its many treasure troves of info (some good, much bad). And the bike and skis, which test my mettle in different ways (and allow me a lot of thought time during long, solitary uphill moments). I am a thinker, and I like to be informed of the world around me and its history, so reading is a big part of my life. But I’m getting most of this info from journals, periodicals and online resources these days, which is a change.

One of my goals for 2009 is to read more books than I did in 2008 – not difficult to do, as I finished a grand total of two (or three, possibly – need to see if I documented anything else) last year. And I’ve made my way through two-thirds of a book I’m reviewing for a blog, and one-third of the way through a book I received for Christmas.

So there’s hope, at least – and, as the quiz claims, I’m not a non-reader.